It’s An Open Secret

I am truly blessed. The utterance of Dharma fills my world. To separate what reading, contemplation or meditation has contributed to the arising of insight over the period being covered in this paper is like trying to separate out the components of a milk shake after they have been blended together. However, in this particular case we have been exploring the view of meditation. Why we meditate and how does that relate to Buddhist Psychology. Further, what is Buddhist Psychology? What is the basis of it? Without question, some of the most revealing teachings came from The Sanity We Are Born With, by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. This reading is where I will draw the bulk of my contemplations.

For a couple of years I have been contemplating and practicing to relax into infinity. I could not translate this into basic goodness or Buddha Nature or any other term, though I knew it was related to that which had no beginning or end, center or fringe, top or bottom and yet here I sat as a part of it, but still somehow separate. Reading one of the most profound forwards that I can recall by Kidder Smith to The Sanity We Are Born With, an intense amount of connections began to come together. The notions of relaxing into Basic Goodness and Riding Windhorse were still quite abstract until I read this. With limited time between input, realization and output, I will do my best to explain.

Why do we meditate? We meditate to become familiar with mind. What is mind? Everything…All we know is mind. It creates our world” (SBW: Forward p.IX). We begin by relating to what we see as our mind, distinct from all other aspects of mind. We do this by practicing precision, gentleness and letting go. This is Shamatha.

The focus of our meditation is brought to the breath as the object of meditation. This provides a basis for the precision, always coming back to the breath. To continue coming back to the breath time and again we must be gentle.

The gentleness of the breath provides the space for that and the end of the out breath allows us to practice letting go. Through this practice we have a way of clarifying the actual nature of mind.

Again, what is mind? Everything.

So, I wake up and pour a cup of mind, brush mind and make love to mind. Then ride to school in mind watching all the mind go by. Even enjoy some more mind in class.

“Realizing this, working with mind is no longer a remote or mysterious thing to do. It is no longer dealing with something hidden or somewhere else. Mind is hanging out in the world. It’s an open secret” (SWB: Forward X).

My experience tells me that a genuine sense of humor can emerge. So, to continue to relate to mind from moment to moment we need a discipline that is as vast and as simple and that again brings us back to the breath, which is always present. It is simple in its precision and vast in its letting go.

Once we see the flimsy nature of the thoughts that we have allowed to run our world, they instantly begin to loose their persuasiveness and we begin to make friends with ourselves. We can then cultivate that friendliness and use it as the basis for all relations. This becomes the basis for psychotherapy because

“we can no longer maintain that we or any other is wounded at our core” (SWB: Forward XII).

Through the practice of sitting meditation we eventually come to something that was always there, basic goodness. “It is the sanity we are born with” (SBW: Forward XI). From then on, everything you do is sacred and perfectly pure. It is then that you are truly available to others and can provide what is needed in the situation. Through this process, we decrease suffering and increase joy not only for ourselves but for those we come in contact with. We begin to become benevolent and wise.

This is what we call Riding Windhorse. The ability to meet each moment with an uplifted sense of what Chögyam Trungpa called warriorship.